On the suggestion of a post over on www.cobraclub.com I decided that it would be a good idea to strip the rear hubs down to component parts (as far as easily possible, anyway) to make posting easier – largely so that the slightly butchered rear disc splash shields could come off as they’ll make everything a much more regular shape for boxing up.

Of course, that turned out to be easier said than done! The (recent) Haynes manuals are about as useful as a glass hammer and the section on rear hub bearing replacement simply says “Remove the hub and hub carrier from the car and take it to a specialist” and the Jaguar workshop manual references lots of Special Service Tools and a jig & ‘button’ used with a hydraulic press to press the rear hubs out of the carrier..

Now I do have a press, but it’s a) in the corner of the garage after the clean up and b) I wasn’t feeling brave enough to use it as some folks had suggested everything should come apart easily – and mine definitely wasn’t doing that! Not wanting to break anything I took a day or two breather and came back to it.

 

When I came back, all thoughts of going gently were abandoned and I picked up a nicely fitting impact socket (29mm for the record), long extension bar and a selection of hammers. Propped the rear hub carriers up on some blocks of wood and started beating on the end of the rear hub – the 29mm socket being just small enough to fit inside the radius of the innermost bearing race on the end of the hub stub itself.

The first hub refused to give up the fight so I switched tactic – I moved on to the other hub. This hub still had it’s ABS reluctor ring intact so I expected it to be the more difficult of the two, but undaunted I stripped off the handbrake parts (the brake linings stayed attached to the shoes this time!), flipped the hub carrier over onto the blocks of wood and beat on it a little.. pop! Out came the hub itself leaving both bearings (inner and outer races) spacer tubes, washers and oil seals inside the hub carrier. Odd, I thought, as I’d expected at least one bearing race to come out with the hub given they are taper roller bearings!

Break for dinner and then back to the first hub with Amy’s help this time.. more pounding and switching the dead blow rubber mallet out for the lump hammer and we thought we saw it move, maybe? Amy suggested we flip the hub carrier over and beat the hub back in to the carrier, then resume trying to beat it out to see if that worked it loose.

SUCCESS! So, thanks to some lateral thinking from my better half, everything is now separated and I have two red boxes full of all the other bits we stripped off.. witness my glorious achievement:

 

As you can see, this one decided on an unconventional removal: